Civics in Song and Dance
Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton: An American Musical celebrated its tenth anniversary in 2025. Most elementary-aged students today have thus grown up with the musical always existing (from their perspective), and many current college students may count it among the influences forming their understanding of the American founding, since they were in elementary or middle school when the musical debuted. As we celebrate America’s 250 birthday, Hamilton remains a cultural resource for cultivating student reflection on the meaning and significance of America’s founding principles.
Since Alexander Hamilton, not Thomas Jefferson, is the play’s protagonist, the authorship and signing of the Declaration are not central to Miranda’s storyline. We might point out to our students the consequences of such narrative choices, in both art and history. Even so, the Declaration’s ideals of liberty and equality underlie much of Miranda’s story. Two songs contain direct quotations from the Declaration, both of which prompt consideration of the original meaning of the Declaration and its place in the American civic tradition. First, in “The Schuyler Sisters,” during the early stages of the Revolution, Angelica Schuyler connects the Declaration’s principles with the revolutionary effort. She claims the Declaration’s commitment to equality as her own, which serves to illustrate Jefferson’s account of the Declaration as “an expression of the American mind.”
After quoting the Declaration’s most famous line that “all men are created equal,” Angelica adds, “And when I meet Thomas Jefferson, I’m ’a compel him to include women in the sequel!” This line invites questions about the relationship between the meaning of America’s founding principles and political practices at the time. That theme is a thread woven throughout the musical, mostly with respect to race and slavery. We might ask our students: Was the Declaration itself guilty of a substantive shortcoming in your judgment, or did the American people, instead, take time to carry out its principles in practice?
Was the Declaration itself guilty of a substantive shortcoming in your judgment, or did the American people, instead, take time to carry out its principles in practice?
Angelica’s statement sounds as though she may be answering the first question in the affirmative, although her remark might be interpreted in more than one way. It is worth noting, at least, that the Schuyler sisters express, in unison, that they consider themselves fortunate to be alive in an age when historic events are taking place, the Declaration prominent among them. As the song comes to a close, the Declaration, the historic significance of the revolutionary moment, and the good fortune of living during that period are tied together again.
Perhaps, then, Angelica’s statement pushes us towards acknowledging the noble character of the Declaration’s principles, their incomplete fulfillment at the time of the founding, and their role in serving as aspirations for American civic life throughout American history. In other words, we can understand Angelica as calling for a fuller application of American principles. That is how we may also understand the 1848 Declaration of Sentiments, with its close modeling of the Declaration and its affirmation that “all men and women are created equal.” In fact, Miranda’s Angelica seems to be a literary foreshadowing of the Declaration of Sentiments in this way, or perhaps a stand-in for Abigail Adams, with her plea to “remember the ladies.”
The Declaration is next quoted in “Cabinet Battle #1,” a debate between Jefferson and Hamil- ton over the establishment of a national bank. Jefferson begins his rap with the three unalienable rights enumerated in the Declaration. He contends that the Revolution was a struggle for those ideals. Although Jefferson is one of the play’s chief antagonists, he thereby gives voice to the thesis that the Revolution was fundamentally about the principles of the Declaration, and he exemplifies the role that those principles have played in subsequent American civic thought and discourse.
We might ask our students, what should that mean for how we think about both the Declaration and Jefferson today?
In response, Miranda’s Hamilton emphasizes the distinction between philosophical principles and the practical demands of politics, a tension that America’s greatest statesmen have recognized without either abandoning a commitment to principle or rejecting the necessity of prudence. He also can’t resist taking a swipe at Jefferson for quoting the Declaration while being a slaveowner, another time the musical calls attention to the gap between principle and practice. In this respect, Jefferson’s practices, not his invocation of the Declaration, seem to be the problem. But, we might ask our students, what should that mean for how we think about both the Declaration and Jefferson today?
The musical concludes with a final reflection on Alexander Hamilton’s legacy and on the nature of a legacy more generally. What will be the legacy of the musical itself ? We may hope that it will be, in part, an ongoing inspiration and resource for young Americans to think more carefully about and to care more deeply about the principles of the Declaration.
About the Author
Zachary K. German is an Assistant Professor in the Institute of American Civics, part of the Baker School of Public Policy and Public Affairs at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. His research focuses on questions of statesmanship, political culture and civic character, civic education, politics and religion, and constitutional design.